


silkies upon the sea

by Pingoodle (ThatAloneOne)



Category: The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry (Traditional Ballad)
Genre: Fix-It, Multi, no love triangles only polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22888096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/Pingoodle
Summary: The sea sang louder now, echoing in the drum of her belly, rippling in the pools of brine by the docks. It warned her, because it was kind. It warned her, because the warning was a threat as much as it was a truth.your wedded love, gunner-a-hunting, will shoot the babe and he,your lover and son both a man upon the land and a silkie on the sea.
Relationships: Hunter/Maiden/Silkie (The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 10
Collections: Once Upon a Fic 2020





	silkies upon the sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darkest_absol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkest_absol/gifts).



> darkest_absol, here lies your ballad with a happy ending. I hope you enjoy it! Happy Once Upon A Fic! Thank you for requesting something from this fairy tale, selkies are my jam in the best way.
> 
> A book rec for you, if selkies are your jam! [The Brides of Rollrock Island](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12009173-the-brides-of-rollrock-island).
> 
> And here is a placeholder, to remind me to link to my selkie fics when this collection goes properly live and public!

She had known, all the way back at the beginning. There had been magic in the silkie-man’s eyes when he’d sat at the foot of her bed, waking her from her drowsing to offer up a whole new type of dream. His hair hadn’t curled like a man’s, or felt like it, under the soft touch of her fingers. It had swept in snarls like the waves themselves, coarse with salt and sea-charms.

After, the waves had sung warnings to her, all through the hard months of her pregnancy. When she moved inland to the relatives she had left, the waves had followed her, whispering in the rise and fall of her cousins’ sleeping breaths. In the spill of salt at the table, she would see him. In the washing basin, the water would curl tight around her fingers like the coil of her lover’s hair.

In the end, she moved back to the sea. It sang louder now, echoing in the drum of her belly, rippling in the pools of brine by the docks. It warned her, because it was kind. It warned her, because the warning was a threat as much as it was a truth.

* * *

_On a summers-May day, a day when sun shines bright on every stone_

_Your son will swim the foam, chained to your heart in gay gold_

_Your wedded love, gunner-a-hunting, will shoot the babe and he_

_Them both a man upon the land and a silkie on the sea_

* * *

Her son’s seventh year was the first time the pup-fluff brushed out of her son’s coat. He blended in better with the rocks these days, cavorting around with his father flopping behind him. The neck-chain, bright and sun-on-sea gold, was a bare and cold comfort.

Her grey silkie had come to trade nurse-fee gold for his son, and she had traded the nurse-fee in return. The force of her love for him, woven in fine gold chain, looped around her son’s neck, swelling with the sea as he flipped from seal to boychild to seal again. He played in the surf as easy as he played in the sand, his father’s child and still her child both. Her old lover spent long nights with them, curious about candlelight and blankets and the chatter of her laughter. Gold was precious to the Folk as much as it was to the ordinary island people, and he wanted to understand why she had turned it down.

She didn’t know how to explain that she hadn’t turned it down. She’d turned it around, changing a nurse-fee for her changeling child into a promise of his safety. Enchantment could be forged into gold, twined into shape and set strong. It was better to rely on than iron, especially for her son. She’d spent too much time prying nails from floorboards and carving pegs to take their place so he could walk without his feet burning to know any less.

Her fairy-child, her sweet little boy-shaped thing, was what she loved more than herself. His father was there with him to swim the foam, slide through currents and teach him how to best splash at his mother, laying in the sun on the shore. She was there to love her sweet seal-pup boy, to raise him to old enough that he could sit on her knee and chatter and be ready to face what they all knew was coming.

She had to have loved her son so much, to spend her nights whispering at the window, shouting bargains back at the sea. The danger wouldn’t come until she invited a hunter to her marriage bed, the sea murmured back. She should have paid better attention to the terms of her lover’s embrace, the sea scolded.

Her arms were always wide, was the problem. Even for her son, even for her lover, even for her sun-basking seal boys, she wouldn’t stop embracing the whole wide world.

There were hunters in the town up Sule Skerry, in houses propped on rocks propped on sea. She knew them, as she knew all the rest of their town. But she had been too busy bargaining with the sea to bother bargaining with herself, and when the hunter who had always watched her with soft eyes asked for her hand, she offered it freely.

She didn’t forget the sea-song, but she did love him. The hunter stood by her side when she sent her son back to the sea, stroking his sleek fur and laughing when he sneezed in her face.

They both watched the seal-things swim for the horizon, grey fur on grey sea.

Through the cold winter months, the hunter held her. When the wind howled, he whittled with her by candlelight, replacing the last of her home’s iron with wood brushed in fae-gold. He listened, when she told her story, and he spoke, when she asked for a plan. She was right, he told her. There was more to this than the water knew.

She loved him. Sea-song or no sea-song, a warning or the new silence on the salt-laden breeze. The world had reached back, filling her wide-open arms with people who would hold her back.

* * *

The very first shot her hunter-husband ever fired was through their skins, laid out to dry on the rocks of the bay.

Had her lover and child been wearing their skins, they would have been dead. The skins didn’t seem to understand that they weren’t: they bled on the rocks for hours, streaking the shoreline with rust. Every few hours she went out to sluice them with seawater, cleaning the wounds with pure salt and sea. Her hunter-husband cauterized the echo-wounds with his clever knife, for none of them were ready to let his part of the story end, either.

Her son wailed the whole night through, bereft, until she went to lay him back into the cradle of the sea. He slept under the moonlight, her trembling hands cupped under his head to keep his boy-child head above the water. Her hunter husband slept further back, on the dry sand of the shore, their silkie lover dozing curled against his back. It hadn’t been his fault. The sea had said it, and so it was.

Her hunter had shot them, the seal things her family wore, and they had died. The sea was right. But this time, so was she.

It was days more until the skins could stand being moved, another week until they were whole enough to be slung over a shoulder. It would be a long time again before they were whole, waterproof, seaworthy as seals ought to be.

The first time she saw her son sleeping in a pool of sunlight against the rough boards of the floor with his sealskin flung carelessly across his lap, she had to sit down. He was alive. A little blurry around the edges where the skin was healing back to its magic, a little fussy at night if he couldn’t hear the sea, but alive.

Her and her lover and her husband rode out the nights together in a puddle of warm blankets and smooth-rough sealskin flung across pairs of twined hands. Nightmares settled easier over three pairs of shoulders than they did one, they all found. Even the coldest nights could be warm with their son sprawled on top of their pile. 

**Author's Note:**

> There's about a bazillion versions of this ballad, so here's the version I cobbled together to go along with this. I am... not really a poet so take it with a grain of salt. Mostly this is about the story and how I came to understand it.
> 
> _I knew not where my babe’s father is,  
>  Or if land or sea does he travel in,  
> Till one day a great grey silkie,  
> Sat him doon at her bed feet._
> 
> _Saying, “awake awake, you drowse a sleeping,  
>  Here am I, your babe's father,  
> Come to trade nurse-fee gold for his son,  
> So he may be taught to swim the foamed ocean."_
> 
> _"I may not be comely but,  
>  I am a man upon the land,  
> I am a silkie in the sea,  
> Home both ways on Sule Skerry."_
> 
> _"A chain round our son’s neck I’ll hang,  
>  A gay gold chain it will be,  
> So when he comes to your Noraway lands,  
> You’ll guess well who is he."_
> 
> _"The sea will only give what it then will take,  
>  And the proud gunner you’ll wed,  
> At very first shot your gunner fires,  
> He’ll kill my babe and me."_


End file.
